But my grandmother had lived through a harder and more honest century than mine, and she knew the truth: that for a woman in a bad situation, financial independence is not a luxury or a comfort.

It is very often the literal difference between escaping and dying.

She had watched, across her long life, women she loved remain in homes that were destroying them — not because they lacked courage, and not because they did not understand what was happening to them, but because they had no money of their own, and nowhere to go, and no way to feed their children if they left, and so the door was locked not from the outside but by their own dependence.

A woman with no independent resources is not free to leave, no matter how brave she is, because leaving would mean choosing homelessness and hunger over abuse, and that is not a real choice at all.